Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that some progress had been made in Moscow's talks with Ukraine, while the Kremlin said the conflict would end when the West took action to address Moscow concerns.
At a Kremlin meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said Western sanctions would not hinder Russian development and that Russia would end up stronger.
He then said Ukrainian negotiations were taking place practically every day.
"There are certain positive shifts, negotiators on our side tell me," Putin said. "I will talk about all of this later."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukraine's Dmytro Kuleba met in Turkey on Thursday in the highest-level talks since the conflict began. No breakthrough was made. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands, displaced more than 2 million people, and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Russia has so far shown no sign that it is changing course.
Lukashenko told Putin that both of them were from Soviet generations which had endured sanctions and that the Soviet Union had developed well. "You are right," Putin said. The Soviet Union lived all the time under sanctions but it developed and made colossal achievements."
The Kremlin said on Friday the conflict in Ukraine would end when the West took action over Russia's repeatedly raised concerns about the killing of civilians in eastern Ukraine and NATO enlargement eastwards.
"We need to find a resolution to these two questions. Russia formulated concrete demands to Ukraine to resolve those questions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Asked by reporters how the crisis could end, Peskov set out Russia's position and said he believed that Ukraine was discussing Moscow's demands with the United States and European Union countries.
"Let's hope. That needs to be done. Then it will all end."
Russia widened its military offensive in Ukraine on Friday, striking near airports in the west of the country for the first time, as observers and satellite photos indicated that its troops, long stalled in a convoy outside the capital Kyiv, were trying to maneuver to encircle the city.
With the invasion now in its third week, the U.S. and its allies prepared to step up their efforts to isolate and sanction Russia by revoking its most favoured trading status. The move comes amid mounting outrage after a deadly airstrike hit a maternity hospital in the key Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, under an increasingly constricting 10-day-old siege.
The new airstrikes in western Ukraine were likely a message from Russia that no area was safe. Western and Ukrainian officials say Russian forces have struggled in the face of heavier-than-expected resistance and supply and morale problems. So far, they have made the most advances on cities in the south and east while stalling in the north and around Kyiv.
Strikes on the western Lutsk airfield killed two Ukrainian servicemen and wounded six people, according to the head of the surrounding Volyn region, Yuriy Pohulyayko. In Ivano-Frankivsk, residents were ordered to shelters after an air raid alert, Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv said.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Russia used high-precision long-range weapons Friday to put military airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk out of action. He did not provide details.
The British Ministry of Defense said that after making limited progress because of logistical mishaps and Ukrainian resistance, Russian forces were trying to re-set and re-posture their troops, gearing up for operations against Kyiv.
Moscow also gave new indications that it plans to bring fighters from Syria into the conflict.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia knew of more than 16,000 applications from countries in the Middle East, many of them from people who he said had helped Russia against the Islamic State group, according to a Kremlin transcript.
Shoigu did not specify Syria and his numbers could not be confirmed. But since 2015, Russian forces have backed Syrian President Assad against various groups opposed to his rule, including Islamic State.
Responding to Shoigu, President Vladimir Putin approved bringing in volunteer fighters and told his defense minister to help them move to the combat zone.
Increasing the pressure on Moscow, the U.S. and other nations were poised later Friday to announce the revocation of Russia's most favored nation trade status, which would allow higher tariffs to be imposed on some Russian imports. Western sanctions have already dealt a severe blow to Russia, causing the ruble to plunge, foreign businesses to flee and prices to rise sharply.
Russian airstrikes also targeted for the first time the eastern city of Dnipro, a major industrial hub and Ukraine's fourth-largest city in a strategic position on the Dnieper River. Three strikes hit early Friday, killing at least one person, according to Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser Anton Heraschenko.